Business group helps keep compatriots from stumbling

Published 6:11 pm, Sunday, February 17, 2013

Members of the San Antonio-based Asociacion de Empresarios Mexicanos gathered recently at Cielito Lindo.

Members of the San Antonio-based Asociacion de Empresarios Mexicanos gathered recently at Cielito Lindo.

Photo: Photos By Billy Calzada / San Antonio Express-News

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Eduardo Bravo is chairman of the San Antonio-based Asociacion de Empresarios Mexicanos, a networking group catering to recent Mexican immigrant businessmen.

Eduardo Bravo is chairman of the San Antonio-based Asociacion de Empresarios Mexicanos, a networking group catering to recent Mexican immigrant businessmen.

Business group helps keep compatriots from stumbling

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In 1990, Mexico City manufacturer Eduardo Bravo was certain his line of men's sportswear would be a hit among Latinos living in the United States.

He moved to San Antonio and barreled ahead with his plan. He opened a distribution center and a small chain of stores in San Antonio and New Orleans. He worked the trade-show circuit, looking for buyers in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and Puerto Rico. He shook hands and cut deals.

Seven years later, he was back in Mexico City, dreams of a Sun Belt clothing empire in shreds. He'd trusted the wrong people and put his money in the wrong places. He'd failed because he hadn't first learned the lay of the new land.

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He's back in San Antonio, though this time with a binational publishing enterprise that he built up carefully, over time, and fully aware of the differing social, legal and business mores.

And as chairman of the Asociación de Empresarios Mexicanos (Association of Mexican Entrepreneurs), he's committed to sharing his hard-won knowledge.

“There's no other organization in the United States doing the same work,” he said. “When you don't know exactly how to do things, it's very difficult. You check the company in Dun & Bradstreet, and you take the risk and give credit, for example.

“I didn't know that when a company goes into bankruptcy, the people can owe you $10,000 or $20,000 and you receive a check of $5!”

He calls it his “second period” for both himself and AEM.

Then, as now, AEM was about hosting networking events and raising the profile of Mexican business people in the city that saw the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement. But when Bravo returned to San Antonio and AEM after about a dozen years back in Mexico, he sensed something monumental was going on. As the Mexican drug war escalated under President Felipe Calderón, Mexicans who had the means moved en masse to San Antonio and other inland U.S. cities. Many were fumbling.

“The people that arrived in the last two, three, four years — they arrive and they arrive desperate,” he said. “They need to do the business for immigration purposes, and they start investing in things they don't completely know, like franchises, or they just open a restaurant or a store or something, and they're lost.”

He told his AEM associates they had an opportunity to play a key role in what some call a diaspora, and they signed on. Raul Correa, a member from Torreón, said he'd helped at least 20 families find schools and places to live, and start businesses.

They come enthusiastic about opportunities, he said, but the underlying understanding is that they felt forced to flee.

“I don't know anybody in Mexico that still lives in Mexico who that some or another has not been affected by the violence,” he said. “In my case, my sister died. She was 35... She was in the wrong car at the wrong time.”

Under Bravo's leadership, AEM began staging Spanish-language workshops on key topics such as immigration and labor law, marketing and social media, investment opportunities, taxes and estate planning.

And it began expanding to other cities, including Houston, Austin, Dallas, New York, McAllen and Brownsville. It now has 14 U.S. chapters. The organization also opened two others in Mexico and will soon open a third — as part of AEM's plan to also be a conduit for U.S. business people in Mexico.

Its quarterly magazine, Empresarios, trumpets the jet set — the ads are for Bentleys and luxury homes, the photos are mementos of meet-and-greet breakfasts, lunches and cocktail hour held in some of Texas' toniest neighborhoods.

The challenges for the Mexican who emigrates to San Antonio will not be the same as the one who emigrates to Houston or the Rio Grande Valley.

But there's a shared culture shock when it comes to doing business, said Alejandro Martínez, an immigration attorney who spoke in August at the Rio Grande Valley chapter's September luncheon in Mission.

“Over here, it's 'Let's talk about numbers, let's talk about concrete facts, let's see whether this is something that's a good investment, and what's my ROI, my return on my investment?'” Martínez said. “For the Mexican business culture, that's not very comfortable. It's not very comfortable telling somebody whether you're interested in buying a million-dollar business without even knowing who the heck the person is.”

There's also a pattern with mistakes, he said, particularly with immigration matters.

Most don't have $500,000 or $1 million to spare to qualify for the EB-5 investment visa, which carries permanent residency. So they apply for an investment visa with a temporary residency that for renewal requires proof the businesses into which they've poured capital remain viable. Many businesses don't.

“They're kind of stuck in this limbo area where they don't want to go back to Mexico — it's not the place they live any more and they're scared of going back,” he said. “And they're very fearful of staying here illegally, especially when in Mexico they are this affluent businessman, well-to-do, and all of a sudden now they're falling into this very stereotypical idea that is around the world of living illegally in the United States.”

While no one has put a number on the wave of refugees, there's no doubt that they are part of what's made San Antonio one of the nation's fastest growing and an economically vibrant city, said Ramiro Cavazos, president of the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which often coordinates with AEM. Not only are they buying homes and spending in malls and restaurants, he said, but they are also forwarding trade with Mexico, which export-wise for the city of San Antonio alone already outpaces that of 42 U.S. states.

“Business is good for us, trade is good, and having the empresarios is just another great tool in our tool box,” he said.
lbrezosky@express-news.net